1and1.com had its chance. I used them for several years without a problem; sure, I was paying a little more than I had to, but they hadn't done anything wrong and I enjoyed the consistency. That is until something broke...

Earlier this week, the website went down. It happens. I get it. But, after an hour or so I began to worry, and so I called them. The tech told me it was a problem with my website and that they were going to run a diagnostic tool to fix the problem by, "quarantining problematic and non-standard files in [my] directory structure." I replied that my website was running fine for the last four days and that the problem was either with their web software or one of their MySQL servers. (1and1 uses servers separate from the public_html hosts for their databases.) The tech insisted on running the tool and I explicitly told him not to as "I don't want you mucking with my files. They are fine. Leave them be. Fix your SQL server."

Well, they mucked with it using their web-fix tool, which did nothing but modify the .htaccess file (the file that controls how a web server responds to file requests in that directory) and rendering the entire website (and all sites hosted by me) unusable. I restored the .htaccess file back to what it was prior to 1and1's disobedience, and -- lo and behold -- everything was (and is) back to normal.

Because I almost always choose "voice" as opposed to "exit" when I am dissatisfied with a product or service, I called 1and1 back to let them know what happened. After 20 minutes on hold (at 3am!) I finally reached a customer service representative. She asked me for my website name, and what the problem was, and then, in the middle of me explaining what was going wrong, I was put on hold. She came back to me a few minutes later with a "sorry about that". And then, without allowing me a word, put me into the phone-queue exit routine. (You know, the "thank you for choosing 1and1, would you like to take a survey?"-type crap.) In essence, she hung up on me.

At great personal expense, I stayed up until 4am (on a work-night) to move my website to another provider. And here we are, with HostMonster.

The moral of the story? I do not tolerate insolence. And neither should you.